Circle of Stones (16 page)

“I'll tell them you're sick.” Randall looks back down at his BlackBerry screen.

“That's romantic.” I grab the device out of Randall's hand and toss it onto the pillow. “Look Randall, I don't think you're hearing me. I'm broke.
B-R-O-K-E.
You don't seem to comprehend what that means, so let me explain. I don't have any more money for expensive dinners, drinks, and nights out with your colleagues. I'm a civil servant. You're a lawyer. I can't keep up.”

Randall stares at me and blinks. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“No, I'm not breaking up with you.” I rub my forehead with the back of my palm. The words spew from my mouth and turn surreal when I say them out loud. “I'm saying we have to work a few things out. Things have to change.”

For a moment neither of us moves. I already can't believe I said that.

“I see.” He looks at me and frowns. I did say it. I wait for a long-winded speech, but for once Randall is silent.

“I'm going to work.” For once I have the upper hand. I pause at the door. Randall hasn't even picked up his BlackBerry yet. “Let's talk about this more later.” Now I have the last word, too.

I sit at the long boardroom table and flick the end of my plastic pen against my knee. One by one, each policy advisor on my team recounts his or her progress for the week.

“You're quiet today, George,” my ultra-efficient boss, Elaine, says finally. I watch her lean back in her chair without relaxing the rigidity of her shoulders. She always looks like a million bucks.

“Yeah, I've been telling all the jokes for a change.” Jack chuckles, as though this is funny. He's responsible for long-term policy planning and has an annoying habit of interrupting everything. “That's why no one's been laughing.”

“Maybe comedy costs extra.” The words tumble onto the boardroom table with more force than I expect. I pause to watch Elaine lean forward and snap to attention. Elaine hates conflict. Controversy gives her hives. “I've made a great deal of progress on my files,” I say. “But apparently I'm working for free, because I haven't been paid for nine weeks.”

“George, this sounds like a matter we should discuss after the meeting.” Elaine is micromanaging me, trying to shut me up. I stand up instead.

“No. It's not the first time. Everyone else here gets paid every two weeks because they're on staff.” I step back to lean against the cool metal of a tall black filing cabinet and cross my arms. “I'm not going to do any further work until I get paid. And this can't continue to happen.”

I see panic in Elaine's eyes and pounce.

“Elaine, make me an employee.”

“George, you know we can't do that. We only have seventeen staff allocations.” Elaine shifts in her chair, attempting to regain authoritative control. Heads swivel and bob around the room. Silence and raised eyebrows. Of course nobody comes to my defence.

“Well, get another one, or I'll be working on my resumé.” I stroll toward the door, walk through the deserted hall to my cubicle, and turn my computer off. Then I grab my jacket. On the elevator I look at my watch and avoid eye contact with people getting on at other floors. It's 11:30 a.m. I have no idea what I'm going to do for the rest of my day. I stare at a bike courier's black leggings and combat-pant cut-offs, study his blue plastic pedal-clip shoes. The elevator doors open to the lobby level and the courier dashes toward a decrepit bike parked by the door. For a moment I wish my job were simpler. Pick up a package, drop it off. Drive a combine across a wheat field and then back the other way. But then I'm outside on Slater Street in the cold. Walking down Bank Street in the wind. I catch a glimpse of the Parliament Buildings and feel a rush. There's nothing like sitting in the press gallery while policies you worked on are being run through first, second, and third reading in the House. Or hearing one of the questions you wrote up being asked, and answered, during Question Period. Nothing else comes close to what it feels like to play strategy games with national consequences. I stand still at the corner of Bank and Slater as civil servants in dark suits and overcoats pass by. I look back at my office tower. I already want to go back.

I turn, stare up the street and glare at the Peace Tower. “I want in.”

I say it out loud. Now I'm a crazy, too. And I think about that fucking kid again. I should help him. I'll ask Randall tonight about what we can do. Randall will know.

The pedestrian light changes and I walk north toward the Hill. I go a whole block before I remember the House isn't sitting this week. I see the sparkling, illuminated sign for Holt Renfrew. A familiar beacon. Comfort. The revolving door spins me in.

I'm fingering soft wool trousers. The tailoring is impeccable. I'm only here to look. But it wouldn't hurt to try them on, see how they fit. Doesn't mean I have to buy them.

“Hi, George.” Anthony, the menswear clerk, always remembers my name. “We just got some new sweaters in that you have to see. The cashmere is gorgeous.”

There's a twinkle in Anthony's brown eyes that reminds me of Randall — early Randall, the one I first met. I follow Anthony to a row of rich woodgrain shelves.

“Oh, the dark grey will look so good on you.” Anthony holds up a sweater in my size. “Let me get you started with a fitting room. I must show you the new season's shirts, too.”

An hour later Anthony is waving bye while Miranda, the cashier, wraps a navy blue shirt, the grey sweater, and a new pair of black wool pants in sheets of pristine white tissue paper. Her silver polished fingernails flash like muted mirrors under the dimmed fluorescent lights. I reach out and touch a subdued orange-and-brown striped winter scarf. Randall would love it.

“I'll take this, too.” I hand the scarf to Miranda. “This one's a gift.”

“Excellent choice.” Miranda removes the sales tag and places the scarf in a box. She leans in, a blush of warmth, admiration, and a hint of co-conspirator in her voice. “Anthony has this scarf in three colour combinations.”

I feel good. For a moment.

Miranda taps the buttons on the computerized cash register with the eraser end of a pencil to preserve her manicure.

“We can give you ten percent off today, George. Will this be on your account?”

Then reality. Sweat starts to bead on my forehead. I shouldn't be doing this. I fumble in my wallet and hand over the credit card I think has the lowest balance.

“Visa.” I wince as Miranda swipes it through. She hasn't said my total out loud. As though it's a minuscule matter. Irrelevant. My credit card is going to explode and send Miranda to the hospital with third-degree burns. I am about to suffer the humiliation and defeat of credit-card decline.

A beep like an angel chorus as the machine flashes the word “approved.”

Once I have the large shopping bag of purchases in hand my wallet feels like a hot rock in my pocket. I slip out a side door. It's almost one in the afternoon and I'm starving. I walk down Queen Street to Hy's Steak House. The hostess finds me a table immediately. I open the menu and try not to think about how I cancelled on Randall. I'm about to get up to leave when my favourite waiter walks by brandishing three steak platters. He flashes me a wide grin. I smile and lean back in my chair to absorb the bustle of the lunchtime rush, power meetings, and policy plays. When my waiter returns I order the ahi tuna appetizer, a Cobb salad without bacon, and a pint of beer. I look around me and feel like I belong. I can watch the chess game of strategic negotiations for hours. Now I wish Randall were here with me. He's good at sideline commentary. And when we run into someone he knows, which is all the time, Randall never fails to remember names and make introductions. I can always count on him for that. Randall has all the contacts anyone with my modest ambitions needs in this town — and then some.

I open the door of my apartment and step in, clicking my heels before slipping my shoes off.

“Hi honey, I'm hohoho, and I've got something for you!” I can smell my own beery, tuna-laced breath. My words disappear into a thick silence.

The clock on the living room wall says three o'clock. Of course Randall's still at the office — it's the middle of the day. I slip off my coat and tie and step into the spare room to snoop through Randall's law files. They're always very John Grisham. Randall practises criminal law and specializes in white-collar fraud. The antique wiring makes a pop sound when I flick the light switch. The messy, dusty room is bathed in orange light. It's been weeks since I've stepped foot in here. Randall has taken it over, claiming it as his own second office. I look around. A tangle of unattached cords snakes along the desk where my computer usually sits. The white bankers' boxes of legal files are gone. There are no file folders, leather briefcases, legal memo pads, or random, strewn papers. The only traces of Randall are the blank spaces in the dust where his things used to sit. And the slightest whiff of Randall's pricy cologne mixed with the smell of sour sweat and feet.

I pick up a restaurant receipt with something scrawled on the back of it:

G,

Will return the computer. Am getting the IT guy at the office to wipe my files from it.

This isn't working anymore.

A man should stand on his own two feet. Will be in touch. Best of luck,

R.

Oh, Randall. You cow. You're as cold as the Ottawa winter and as emotionally retarded as my parents. I bite my lip. That's the first time I've made
that
odious connection. Now I'm going to need months of expensive psychotherapy on top of everything else. I head to the bedroom. Randall's dresser drawers are empty. My green tie, a brown sweater vest, and a couple of my older, pre-Randall shirts are piled on the unmade bed. There's a Post-it on top, with the single word “No.” written on it. I return to the living room. I half expect Randall's rules of bartending and drinking etiquette to be posted on the liquor supply, but there are no further notes.

“You took my dignity, but at least you left me my Scotch.” I lift the bottle from the sideboard and grab a glass. “What's left of it, anyway.” I pour slowly then raise my nearly full glass to the ceiling.

I return to the living room and put an old record on the turntable. Joy Division. One of my favourites. Randall would have hated it. Then I see the Holt Renfrew bag by the door. The cashmere wound.

I imagine Randall's bank statement. What it would look like for him to peel off the relative billfold equivalent of the toonie I tossed at the kid on the street. Now I understand why the kid tried to give it back. I'm not looking for a handout, either. But I would have appreciated a measure of understanding. I would have enjoyed being taken out for dinner. Randall could afford that. And together we could have figured out how to help that kid.

I know I'm slouching and I don't care. I don't need to feel expensive. No one's here to criticize how I look, see that my contact lenses are floating. I try to blink away the pools in my eyes. I'm so tired of running the money marathon. I can't keep up. All I want is a real job, a good night's sleep in my own bed, and the occasional grilled cheese sandwich with my niece. Cash to give a worthwhile cause or two. Access to Randall's connections again. Randall. The record starts to skip. I adjust the needle, lie on the floor, and listen to Ian Curtis sing “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

My back starts to hurt. My head is already throbbing. I stand up and grab the stack of new mail I'd tossed on the hall shelf on the way in. Mixed in with four bills are two brown government envelopes. I tear them open. One is an HST statement, and the other a tax-installment reminder. Still no cheque. I wander into what used to be the computer room, open the desk drawer, and pick up a pad of yellow-lined notepaper and a mechanical pencil. I look around. The de-Randall-ed room might as well be a clear-cut in a forest. There's no way I'll be able to think in here. I head back into the living room and sit down at the seldom-used dining table by the kitchen. I draw a thick line on the notepad to make two columns. On the left side I write all the current debts I know about. The list flows a long way down the page. I'm not ready to add it all up. On the right I note my total savings: $1,100 in a non-cashable RRSP.

I already miss the constant bustle of Randall typing and talking on the phone in the spare room. The presence of another warm body in the apartment. I pour the remaining Scotch into my glass and grab a stack of bills from the mail tray. I open each one with the dull blade of a kitchen knife and organize them into stacks. I think about how rent is due soon and feel shorter, older, and more ordinary. I want to be around people.

I picture myself back on the farm, sitting on top of the old tractor parked in the barn where I can think and everything always stays the same. After all these years. I try to imagine wearing grubby old jeans and dirty boots again, letting my hair be messy. Maybe I'd grow a beard. I can already taste the limp homemade muffins and burnt chocolate-chip cookies, freshly baked for my arrival and still cooling in the farmhouse kitchen.

I flip through my credit card bills and find the one with the lowest balance. I circle the balance owing and the due date, crave a burnt cookie, stand up, but then make myself sit down again. The 1-800 number for the airline is on the first page of my address book. I tell myself I need a rest. I'll book a return ticket and be back in no time. I pick up the phone, dial, then hang up. I think of Parliament Hill. Black-vinyl-covered briefing books. Cashmere scarves in three colours. Lhia. Randall. I pull the note pad closer and start adding the numbers.

M
ontreal
, 8:30 a.m. The height of the morning commute. The Berri-UQAM station is packed. I stride across the tile, iron in one hand, my board, Simone de Boardoir, in the other. I have twelve white shirts, hangers, and a bungee cord in my backpack.

The metro rumbles into the station. I hang back as the doors open, bolting in at the last moment. I'll have just enough space in the standing-only area by the exit. A tall man in a suit hangs on to the support bar with one hand, reads
Le Devoir
with the other. I clip the bungee cord between two supports, flip Simone's legs down, unzip the upper pouch of my pack. Twenty-five seconds. My portable electric iron has been warming up since I came down the escalator. I pull a shirt out of my bag, and focus on the ironing.

Shirt one: pressed in thirty seconds. I hang it up on the bungee cord line.

Shirt two: people are staring. I ignore them.

Shirt four: I'm jostled but maintain my balance.

Shirt eight: I hear people asking questions. (“Hey, what is she doing?” “
Qu'est-ce qu'elle fait là
?”)

Shirt nine: A guy in a T-shirt and jeans holds up a camera phone. I hang the shirt in front of my face.

Shirt twelve: Done. Jean-Talon station comes into view. Simone folds, bungee cord comes down, shirts hook onto the back of the board, iron switched to Off.

I'm the first person to leave the train. I push my way to the elevator no one uses, disappear.

Iron Maiden Baffles Metro Riders

An unidentified woman, bearing the logo “EI” on her jersey, for “Extreme Ironing,” appeared on the metro yesterday, ironing shirts on the orange line, between Berri-UQAM and Jean-Talon stations before disappearing. Conflicting reports suggest the woman either transferred to the blue line or fled up the escalator.

A spokesperson for the London-based Extreme Ironing Bureau, who calls herself “Gertrude Steam,” says extreme ironing is an emerging sport, practised by an estimated 1,500 participants around the world. It is judged on the merits of danger, ironing quality, and speed.

Extreme Ironing has no known connection to any terrorist organization.

“I saw the ironing woman this morning on my way to work,” says Monique LaFlamme, a retail sales manager. “She ironed so fast I knew she wasn't doing last-minute laundry. It was skill.”

Others were skeptical.

“This is the kind of arty thing that happens in Montreal all the time,” says Joey Tremblay, a McGill University student. Tremblay tried to snap a cellphone photo of the woman ironing, but she hid behind a pressed shirt.

“Why the anonymity?” says Tremblay. “This woman should identify herself and do this in a gallery.”

Citing the right to privacy of its competitors, representatives from the Extreme Ironing Bureau declined to comment about the woman's motives and identity.

Transit authorities investigating the incident declined comment.

—
Montreal Gazette

Back home in Ottawa I read the article out loud to my cat, Barnacle, who twitches his tail in mute appreciation. I stroke the top of his head until he purrs. He was a stray. My street discovery. All he needed was a little cleaning up.

“Page A6, that's not bad, eh, Barnie? We beat their coverage of the B.C. election. Better than reading about depressing stuff all the time. Like bodies in the canal. Or malevolent staff at a seniors' home.”

I fold the newspaper around the article, and iron it on Low. Then I cut along the sharp, perfect fold lines with a box cutter. I place the clipping between the pages of my hardcover edition of
The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing
. Tomorrow I'll take it to work and make four clandestine photocopies: One for the bureau, one for my brother, one for my dad, and an extra copy for myself. I hate the way newsprint yellows as it ages.

I'll send my dad's copy along in his next bundle of pressed shirts.

I pick up the phone to call my one friend here in Ottawa, George. Another prairie transplant. He was the most popular kid I knew in our tiny high school on the outskirts of Winnipeg. Not that he was especially popular — no one else talked to me in high school and I was too shy to talk to them. George made me laugh. And he made a point of keeping in touch with me, even though he moved here long before I did. The year I arrived, he used to drag me out to the Lookout or Icon to go dancing, but I always ended up sitting in the corner drinking whiskey sours by myself while George talked to what seemed like everyone in the bar. I could never hear well enough over the crashing dance music to make any new friends. And when George introduced me to his clever friends, the most intelligent witticism I could usually come up with was, “Hey, how's it going?” Everyone seemed so happy-shiny. It made me want to hide away somewhere, alone with all my dull, lugubrious negativity. I started making excuses when George invited me to go out. But he pestered me enough that now I meet him for brunch every Sunday at the Manx Pub where he gives me a full weekend report, updates me on his relationship with his swanky lawyer boyfriend Randall, and makes me play a silly civil servant guessing game. His stories remind me why I should never ever
ever
date a lawyer. As for civil service — well, to me almost everyone in Ottawa looks like they work in an office. Doesn't matter to me which one. I'm not obsessed about figuring them out and matchmaking departments for them like George is. It's the people who don't wear suits who stand out for me. Those are the people I notice. University activists. Nightclub dwellers. Tattooed people. Bike couriers. Panhandlers. Street kids.

George picks up after the first ring.

“George! Check out the online edition of the
Gazette
.”

“Hi, Princess, I'm on a super-slow, borrowed PC, it's a super long story. Let me just disconnect chat …
et voila
. What am I looking for?”

“Oh, you'll know when you see it.” My iron hisses and sputters. It's almost out of water. “I've got to get back to ironing.”

I hang up. I'm still excited, but I know George well enough to know right away something's bothering him.

I probably shouldn't tell him I saw his niece walking down Bank Street yesterday with a tall mess of kid I've seen on the streets. Ottawa is so staid and predictable that even the panhandlers have their regular spots. This kid looks out of place wherever he goes. I don't think he's from here. I always see him in different corners and doorways: by the canal, on Sussex Drive, sometimes even on Wellington near Parliament Hill. He has a lost look in his eyes. Like he doesn't know how he wound up here. Or how to get out.

I've asked myself the same question.

A new parcel. That's what I need to focus on right now. Extreme ironing. Escape ironing. Elegant irony. I slide the box cutter through brown paper, unwrap four dirty white shirts for the hamper toss. A copy of my dad's new business card is stapled to a letter printed in his favourite font. On his lawyer firm's stationary.

DEAR LUCY,

Here is my new business card.

The partners chose blue this year.

Keep working hard.

Love,

DAD.

For my dad, it's a thoughtful note. We've made progress. I affix it to my fridge with a flower magnet my mom gave me once.

I shine my iron's handle with the hem of my favourite concert T-shirt — from a Björk show George went to in Toronto. It takes a minute and a half for my iron to beep ready. I set my digital egg timer to thirty seconds. I need to keep training. I grab a shirt.

I've improved on my mother's and grandmother's lackadaisical method (sleeve, flip, sleeve, flip, cigarette drag, collar, back, sides, cigarette drag, button placket). My technique is about speed: I stack shirt sleeve on top of shirt sleeve for one hard press, fling fabric into air, swoop over back, sides, button placket, leaving the collar for last. I'm so fast I can iron without scorching.

Extreme ironing was George's idea. A joke about spicing up my after-work life.

“If you have to do your dad's ironing at least be feminist about it.” George gesticulated comically to the sky. “Get out of your gloomy apartment and go iron those shirts on top of Mount Everest.” I think he heard about it through someone in his badminton club. I read up about it online — at work, when I was supposed to be compiling press clippings on illegal striped bass fishing.

I started training about four months ago. Just about the time the antidepressants started kicking in. The Montreal subway was my first E.I. event, but I plan to do more. I will target urban jungles: New York, Paris, London, Tokyo. All dangerous now that stealth and strange baggage can get you arrested as a terrorist suspect.

It makes me feel a little like a spy, and less like a Canadian federal civil servant.

At least I don't come home from work and lie on the sofa in my pajamas crying anymore.

The day my mom died of a sudden heart attack I was at work in my cubicle on the thirteenth floor of a government office tower on Kent Street. National headquarters of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Communications branch, Maritime division. Playing solitaire on my computer. I left at five, walking straight home to my downtown apartment. My dad called me at 5:35 with the news, having calculated the time difference between Winnipeg and Ottawa. He'd waited for me to finish my day at work. My job “on the Hill” has always been important to him.

My dad used his calm, reassuring tax lawyer's voice. I paced my reaction, maintaining control long enough to arrange a flight, read my credit card number over the phone, pack. At that point, feeling the electrical storm coming, I shakily called a cab and got the earlier red-eye to Winnipeg. The flight wasn't full. The seat next to me was empty. I buckled in, watched the video-projected safety demonstration, and then felt the whites of my eyes melt, begin draining. Once I lost control there was no getting it back. The stewardesses gave me sympathetic looks, Kleenex, and glasses of water.

That night a stream of tears fell out of the passenger windows of a Boeing 737. Freezing in midair, they dropped twenty thousand feet onto the fields below. Farmers from Ontario to Manitoba complained of crop damage. Mysterious hail.

Winnipeg was a blurry ride in my dad's silver Cadillac from airport to home, from home to church, from church to cemetery, from cemetery to home. My brother Tim, a travel and culture reporter, had flown in from Belarus for the funeral. There was a sodden, sullen family talk. My grandmother had coughed through years of frailty, but her emphysema-riddled lungs continued to rasp until she was ninety-six. My mom surrendered. Exhausted at sixty. I realized I was the only woman left in my immediate family.

I decided I wanted to stay at home, in the house I'd grown up in. Yet home was my mother in the kitchen, laundry room, basement, garden, always working, puttering and chatting. When I moved away, my mother wrote me long letters, with updates on all the neighbours, bugs in the garden, choices for new wallpaper or paint, the trips her co-workers were taking. She enjoyed her job. Her close friendships lasted over forty years. She was unedited, spontaneous, and kind. The notes of encouragement she wrote to me spanned decades of lunch boxes, sleepover pillowcases, piano recital music, college care packages — each decorated with little flourishes and illustrations she drew in the margins. I kept each one, pressed flat and safe in the pages of my favourite novels.

Now our house at the edge of town, sprawling with years of additions and hapless renovation, was moist and empty.

Tim seemed to expect room service. Mom had turned Tim's old bedroom into a computer room shortly after he left, so he stayed in the guest room, used my shampoo, and waited for coffee to be made. We didn't have a chance to talk. He left the day after the funeral without making the bed, flinging himself farther into Eastern Europe to write for U.S. magazines about Latvian flower boxes and the resurgence of traditional Ukrainian embroidery patterns.

Tim's eyes had been misty, wistful. He'd been away for a long time. Physically and mentally.

I slept on the rec-room couch until my tear ducts became infected. I couldn't stand to stay in my old room. My mom's vacuum was still in there. Her duster and her caddy of cleansers and shammies left on the bed. She died on cleaning day. The day before laundry day. My dad quickly ran out of clean shirts.

Spending my evenings ironing my dad's shirts reminds me of being six, of silently staring at my grandmother hunched over her built-in wooden board in the old farmhouse kitchen. She smoked with one hand and ironed tablecloths and tea towels with the other.

Feeling a hot iron spit and steam in my hand reminds me of being eight, of learning multiplication tables while safely tucked away at the orange study carrel in my parents' basement, right beside my mom's oversized yellow padded ironing board. That's where my mom, a dental hygienist, used to hum old show tunes while she ironed her pink and blue cotton uniforms, my dad's shirts, my dresses, tops, and pants. The sensation of fresh, pressed clothing always felt comforting against my skin. It wouldn't have been my first choice in hobbies, but it's what I have left. Somehow it connects me to her. I don't ever remember her ironing anything for Tim. He liked the rumpled look. Still does.

The smell of hot cotton and polyester, the surging hiss of steam, the sound of the iron clicking against buttons belongs to me.

I smile, place another shirt on a hanger, watch Barnacle paw at his squeak toy. The phone rings.

“Hi, George.” I know who it is before he says anything.

“Dear God! Not only did you leave your apartment, you left the
city
. That was you in Montreal, you secretive little thing. Next time you need to bring me along though.”